First up, Dee Hock has made more money than God, so I feel like it might be a
good idea to trust him when it comes to how we comport ourselves in the business
place. Although maybe not. Wikipedia hillariously states: “Through a series of
unlikely accidents, Hock helped invent and became chief executive of the credit
system that became VISA International.” I leave unlikely accidents as an
exercise to the reader.

At any rate, I like this quote a lot. This post is a pretty rambling one about
why I like it so much. I believe that it touches on some deep ways that we work,
and can help us reject cynicism and laziness that finds its way into
organizations.

But First: Thought-Terminating Clichés

There’s a good book on propaganda by a Psychiatrist named Robert Lifton:
Thought Reform, and the Psychology of
Totalism. The book is pretty good in
general, but Lifton invokes an interesting concept that I’d like to talk about:
Thought-terminating Clichés.

From the book:

This refers to a cliché that is a commonly used phrase, or folk wisdom,
sometimes used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the clichéd phrase in and
of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of
dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it
thought-terminating.

In the context of this book Lifton discusses them as a tool that states used to
alter thought in predictable ways.

Freedom is universally accepted to mean… something. Propagandists can subtly
occupy the phrase with their own ideology. If the state’s will is common sense,
how would you ever argue with it? If the state’s will is self contradictory
(democracy is good, but let’s put dictators in power if they’ll deal with us),
this can entirely be hidden inside the cliché, and the mind never really has to
experience the contradiction.

Thought-Termination and Principles

Suppose Romeo meets Juliet and wants to know what he feels. Wanting to know a
good word to describe what he’s going through, he turns to Google and types
“define love”

an intense feeling of deep affection.

“Ah! Okay, all sorted then.” thinks Romeo. His thought has terminated. He has a
useful word for it. Why go further?

I argue that “Love” is a thought-terminating cliché. There is a very good reason
why wizened elders will roll their eyes at puppy-dog love between star crossed
lover types. In the play, Romeo and Juliet are experiencing a particular brand
of adolescent “love,” that ultimately leads to the tragic ending of double
suicides and happy daggers. It isn’t good, and people get a feel for how
senseless it was, and how shallow their relationship was. They were just two
kids who met at a party!

As much as we can talk about people having experience and learning what is
meant by a word like Love, we can definitely see that the word doesn’t seem to
be doing a good job in this case. Lots of young people hear about the concept
of Love and go into relationships saying “I love you” basically ASAP. Talk to
these same people years later, and they will laugh about how naive they were
back then (Not romeo and Juliet thought because 🔪, obviously.) We write a lot
of songs about Love and how crazy it makes you. And on and on.

Really, Love is always something more. It takes a lot of time. It isn’t quite
happiness. It isn’t quite connection. It isn’t quite security. But it certainly
is partly all of these things and others. Divorces happen. Sixth marriages do
to. Nowhere in this soupy mess is the word or definition of “Love” very useful.
In fact it could even be very destructive. People can fall out of Love, and
never know it. They can say the word without being in love and never notice
they weren’t. Just as “freedom” masked state hypocrisy in the previous section,
“love” can do the same but between two people. Maybe if Juliet would have sat
and thought about what she really meant by love, she’d have woken up in the
church, and walked out alive.

We all say it, but I think nobody is quite positive what is really meant by it;
but that doesn’t make the word unimportant. In fact, people will vigorously
defend the idea that they Love their significant other, and they’ll say it back
and forth all day long, and get warm fuzzies and feel certain that what they
have is love. How can we be so sure that we have a thing if we can’t even
explain it?

Because Love is a principle.

Those Who are Closest

I think a good principle, in the way that Dee Hock means it, is like Love or
Freedom. We can never really define or understand them.

From Wikipedia.

[Tao] is a Chinese word signifying ‘way’, ‘path’, ‘route’, or sometimes more
loosely, ‘doctrine’ or ‘principle’. Within the context of traditional Chinese
philosophy and religion, the Tao is the intuitive knowing of “life” that
cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept but is known nonetheless
through actual living experience of one’s everyday being.

Principles are like the Tao (ARE the Tao.) They are things which can only be
understood through living them. You can’t completely ever define them. You can’t
completely understand them. That’s the whole point. Their shifting nature is
part of what makes them useful. Fixate solely on Love, and you end up like Romeo
and Juliet. Focus on the life you want with the person you want to have it with,
and you end up with love. You cannot fall in love by wanting to fall in Love.
You just kind of have to go and be in Love.

The power of principles is not what they are as concepts. The power of a
principle are their undefinability. A good principle will yield infinite
action without becoming more clear to you. In fact, if you follow a principle,
understanding it really doesn’t seem important any more. Don’t worry about it.
Resist the urge to document or capture your principles. Just think about them,
and act.

The difficulty with company principles is that they are formed outside of
yourself. When they’re adopted and distributed to the teams, it is exceedingly
difficult to express this intangibility in a way that clicks properly. At this
point, principles will operate as thought-terminating clichés. They are reduced
to a definition. The moment this happens they stop being principles, and start
being words. It is a way, not a concept. The only value to be had in a principle
is the value gained by thinking beyond it. When principles degrade, they
actually prevent us from progessing. How does a company learn to naturally live
with its principles? How do we work together as a team to embody undefinable
concepts?

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling
potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. - Alan Watts